PEOPLE
THE ROLE OF EVALUATION
IN A PERIOD OF CHANGE
Interview with Persis Drell,
CVI outgoing president
The INFN is aware of the importance of unbiased evaluation in order to continue as a centre of excellence and maintain a competitive edge. For this reason, ever since 1997 its research activities have been subject to evaluation by an International Evaluation Committee (Comitato di Valutazione Internazionale – CVI) made up of seven experts from different countries in the fields of economics, industry and research. Each year the CVI produces a report on the INFN’s research activities, along with its proposals for ways of improving overall performance. This report is sent to the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research together with the three-year plan. The last meeting of the CVI with the INFN’s management was held on 20-22 October at the INFN Southern National Laboratories. It was also the last meeting to be chaired by Persis Drell, an accomplished scientist of international acclaim who has held several leading positions and whose four-year term as Chair of the CVI has come to an end. ...
NEWS
New Projects
SEARCHING FOR DARK MATTER IN AN AUSTRALIAN GOLD MINE
Stawell, a gold mine just under 300 kilometres from Melbourne, could become the first underground laboratory in the Southern hemisphere. Its purpose would be to search for dark matter, a project already underway at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory (LNGS-INFN), and to replicate the Dama/Libra experiment which has running at the LNGS since 2008. ...
Science
GRAN SASSO LABORATORIES SET NEW RECORD FOR COLD TEMPERATURES
The CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events) experiment at the INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratories has set a world record by cooling a copper vessel with a volume of one cubic metre to a temperature of 6 millikelvins: this is the first experiment ever to cool a mass and a volume of this size to a temperature this close to absolute zero. ...
Science
LATEST AMS-02 RESULTS REACH UNPRECEDENTED ENERGIES
The latest results of the large antimatter detector AMS-02 (Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer) have been published in Physical Review Letters. The INFN and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) are taking part in the experiment that has been orbiting the Earth aboard the International Space Station since May 2011. ...
Italy
THE INFN NATIONAL LABORATORIES
ON GOOGLE STREET VIEW
You can now visit the Frascati, Gran Sasso, Legnaro and Southern National Laboratories using the Street View option in Google Maps. These are the first Italian research centres to be photographed and “mapped” by Google: further recognition of the INFN’s research facilities as centres of scientific excellence just months after the issue of four postage stamps dedicated to the Labs. ...
AN INTERNATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE FOR GRAVITATIONAL WAVES 
ITALY AT CERN, A SHOWCASE FOR ITALIAN ENTERPRISES